


Relocation Services

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: First Time, M/M, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Mid-Credits Scene Compliant, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-24 03:29:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17696804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: T'Challa puts Bucky in charge of helping the Asgardians settle in Wakanda. Thor suggests that Loki partner with him on the job.Great. Just, great.





	Relocation Services

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



“The ship will land in three minutes,” a voice blared over the loudspeakers. 

Not that Bucky needed the info. Any idiot who’d had vector theory, pilot training, and wind resistance mechanics drilled—literally—into his head could have calculated that on their own.

But, still, he patted his hair to make sure it looked all right, and checked the pinning of his empty sleeve. He tried to look natural in the traditional robe Shuri had told him to wear and hoped that the ribbon with which she had tied back his hair looked less stupid than he feared.

“Why are you fidgeting?” Okoye asked. “You never fidget.” _She_ , of course, had mastered statuesque stillness to the point where her lips barely moved when she spoke. 

Bucky had once been like that. Funny, how healing worked. Shuri had left him all the knowledge and skills he’d learned from Hydra—because, as she’d said, they were _his_ now—but he could no longer command the old, ghostlike mannerisms. He could fake it, sometimes, but it didn’t come out quite the same. 

“Just don’t know what I’m doing here, is all,” he replied with a one-shouldered shrug at the assembly surrounding them. Wakanda’s who’s who had turned up at the airstrip today, all decked out in their formal best, and arranged according to a complex set of social rules. Bucky, as the only outsider ever invited to settle in Wakanda, lacked a place in this ossified power structure. And yet, he’d been positioned next to the Dora, next to the _queen_.

“You are here to demonstrate that Wakanda has welcomed visitors and refugees before,” Ramonda said. “Your presence here will show them that they are not alone, that they are not the first to receive Wakanda’s generous embrace.”

“Okay,” Bucky replied, politely holding his tongue instead of pointing out that if Wakanda really were all that open, he wouldn’t be the only non-Wakandan in sight. 

The ship—a real, live spaceship—began spewing exhaust all over them in its descent. And that’s how Bucky learned that things from space weren’t automatically cleaner, smoother, or snazzier. This ship looked like a tough piece of shit that had seen better days. This fact immediately endeared it, and everyone inside it, to him. 

A jet way opened and everyone stood, if possible, even straighter.

Thor came down first. His loose-limbed confidence and stature were just as imposing in real life as on TV. Bucky, who had obsessively watched videos about all the Avengers over the past couple of years—ostensibly as a way to learn about the modern world, but really to get a glimpse of Steve’s new life—had never paid that much attention to Thor. He was too obvious: too big, too good-looking—a _god?_ —too much.

But today, he looked different. For one, he’d cut his hair, and… wore an eyepatch. Like the ship, he looked as though he’d had a rough time of it. His torn cape failed to flutter with the irritating wind-machine perfection it had in all the YouTube videos, which immediately made Bucky feel less self-conscious about his arm, or lack thereof. It immediately made Bucky like the guy better.

Thor and T’Challa had friends in common—Steve and Natasha—so despite being strangers, they were able to make the greetings something a little more companionable than Bucky had been expecting from the normally hyper-controlled T’Challa. 

Or maybe that was just Thor’s big personality at work.

While the kings shook hands and exchanged grand words, the Hulk lumbered out. A mix of cheers and surprised gasps went up. He had been presumed dead, the last person anyone expected to exit this ship. Between the Hulk and a couple of disgustingly gorgeous people—a golden-eyed man with the biggest fucking sword Bucky had ever seen, and a statuesque woman whose gait lay somewhere between swagger and stagger—Bucky had a feeling he was the only one fixated on the tall, pale man who strode out between the VIPs and the rest of the populace. He scanned the crowd with the kind of steeliness and nonchalance Bucky could tell was fake; he knew because he was trying and failing to project the same thing. 

Bucky didn’t judge the guy for failing, though; it would have been hard for anyone to look cool wearing such a stupid helmet. Looking at him reminded Bucky of Steve back in the day, trying to look tall and tough despite standing next to much bigger guys. Not that this man wasn’t plenty big and dangerous looking. Handsome, too. 

Bucky mentally smacked himself and swallowed down some oncoming drool. It had been so long since he’d reacted to someone like this—since before the war, really—that it took him a second to diagnose the cause of these symptoms. Unfortunately, just when he’d gotten a hold of this weird onset of lust, Stupid Helmet’s sweeping gaze paused on him, probably because he was the odd duck in the crowd. Bucky stared back. He tried to channel Okoye again, but had a bad feeling it came off as squinting.

Thor beckoned the guy over to where he and T’Challa were talking.

“And this is my brother,” he said, to Bucky’s surprise. The two of them looked nothing alike. Moreover, it meant Stupid Helmet was a _prince_ , a realization that left Bucky feeling irrationally disappointed. No matter what Ramonda said, Bucky was a nobody. Princes were out of his league. If he’d needed yet another reason to snap out of it, this was it.

Not even Bucky’s super-sharp hearing could make much of Thor’s remarks over the groans of the spaceship and the nervous chatter of the now-descending Asgardian populace. But after a few more words of introduction and explanation, Bucky could see T’Challa’s face grow concerned.

Stupid Helmet vacillated between slappably smug and tearfully scared. 

Both were a good look on him.

* * *

Bucky had never actually attended a gala before, but he’d watched enough of them from a sniper position to know generally what to do. He leaned against a wall near the bar and tried to look like he had merely decided to take a break from mingling, instead of hiding from it. Shuri had had this tuxedo custom made for him by a Wakandan tailor who’d studied on Saville Row. It fit him like a dream, but after months of comfy Wakandan robes, it felt wrong.

The beautiful but plastered Asgardian woman—a Valkyrie, he’d overheard at some point during the day—made her way over to him. Without asking, she poured a sloshful from her giant bottle into his mostly empty ginger ale glass.

“You’re welcome,” she said, slumping against the wall next to him. 

“It’s wasted on me,” Bucky said. “I don’t get drunk.”

“You’ll get drunk off this.” She looked him up and down. “You’re some sort of mortal… plus, aren’t you?”

“How’d you guess?” 

“I didn’t. The king of this place told me.”

“So, why’d you ask?”

She shrugged. “Just trying to make conversation. Guess I’m rusty.” She took another long drink. “But tell me, exactly how ‘plus’ are you? Because we’ve got an assignment for you.”

“Who’s we?”

“Ah, so this is him?” a honey-smooth voice interrupted. “I had a suspicion it would be.”

Thor’s brother had come to join them. He leaned against the wall on Bucky’s other side, dangling a champagne flute between bony fingers and arching his head back to expose a long line of neck and a lickable Adam’s apple. Bucky gulped and turned back to the Valkyrie, who, despite being objectively more attractive, was less specifically calibrated to make him hot around the collar. Inasmuch as Bucky had ever examined the part of himself that was into men enough to identify a ‘type’, this guy was exactly it, stupid helmet and all. Tall and lanky yet strong under all that leather, with a voice like sex, and a snooty, unattainable air of rudeness mixed with something like shyness. Bucky had always been a sucker for this, for all of it, especially the rudeness. Steve used to call him a glutton for abuse.

“This is him,” the Valkyrie said, giving Bucky a once-over. “The White Wolf. The Winter Soldier. Sergeant Barnes. A reputedly fearsome paragon with more monikers than arms. I have to say, I hope your wit is sharper than you let on. Otherwise, Heimdall and I might have to ask the kings to reconsider.”

“Reconsider what?” 

“You’ve been tasked with leading the day-to-day integration of the Asgardian people into their new lives here,” she said, and then cocked her head at the brother and made sloppy gestures of togetherness. “Your Asgardian partner in this endeavour is to be Loki.”

Even though the word “partner” used about him with Thor’s hot brother made deranged, pleasurable pings start going off in his poor abused head, Bucky did not miss the panic-inducing bombshell. “Leading the integration? I didn’t sign up for that. No one even…”

“Then you and I have both learned a new word today,” Loki said dryly. “’Voluntold.’ What should I call you? Winter? Mr Wolf?”

“Bucky is fine.”

“That wasn’t on the list of names,” Loki said.

“People have been telling me what I’m called for as long as I remember, but Bucky is what I call myself,” Bucky answered defensively. 

“I can respect that. I have been called ‘Odinson’, which I am not. ‘God of Lies’ and ‘Lord of Chaos’, which sound a bit better, but create a lot of pressure to perform, don’t you think? Then there is ‘Silver Tongue’, which I would like if it were always meant as a compliment, but it is not.” 

“How about I just call you ‘Loki’, then?”

Loki directed a mischievous grin at Bucky that lit up the room. “Please do.”

In that moment, Bucky had a premonition that he was screwed.

Shuri was making her way towards them, adjusting her corset through her dress and scowling at it. Bucky had never figured out how a mind brilliant enough to have made T’Challa’s suit, to have built the vibranium transport train, to have fixed his fractured mind, kept getting defeated by some old-fashioned undergarments. She looked nervous when she saw who surrounded him, but pulled him off the wall and into a kiss on the cheek, after a quick but formal nod at Loki and the Valkyrie.

“Your hair looked really nice today, if I say so myself,” she said, fingering the edges of the half-ponytail she’d given him. “Come with me to get another drink.” 

“You’re laying it on a little thick, princess,” he whispered into her ear as she dragged him away. “Feeling guilty about something?”

“They’ve told you, haven’t they? I was supposed to be the one, and catch you first…”

“Too slow.” They hailed a passing waiter and relieved him of four glasses of whiskey. “But really, who thought I was the right guy for this? Who thinks I’m ready? I still need check-ups. I’m still a state secret here. I’m still—”

“You _are_ ready. You have been ready for weeks. Perhaps it is not yet time for you to re-enter the world, but that is only because the world has not yet been made to understand your worth. But you are ready for more. This is it.”

“You’re the one who ‘voluntold’ me, aren’t you?”

Shuri grinned. “It’s like I have two older brothers to torment now. Life is good.”

Bucky looked back at where Loki and the Valkyrie were watching him. Well, actually, Loki was watching. The Valkyrie was staring into her now empty bottle. Bucky quickly looked away.

“He’s quite pretty, isn’t he?” Shuri said lightly. “Definitely better-looking than the monster I’d imagined.”

“What are you talking about?” Bucky asked, fooling no one.

“Thor’s brother. Only the Avengers and some top people at SHIELD ever knew, and we are trying to continue to keep it a secret, since spreading the knowledge will not help the Asgardians’ case with the international governments. But I can tell you. Loki… He’s the one who led the alien attack in New York years ago.”

And now, Bucky remembered why that stupid helmet had seemed vaguely familiar. A couple of grainy, five-second videos was the most anyone had ever caught of the human-looking leader of the creepy, prehistoric, flying shark aliens. But in those videos had been flashes of something shiny and curved on his or her head. 

“Why isn’t he in a cell?” Bucky asked.

“He _was_ in a cell, and worse, for quite some time. They remain slightly wary of him, but Thor says he’s grown, and that circumstances were more complicated than anyone knew. Even the Valkyrie says he’s not as bad as she thought, and she is not one to give even such low approval easily. Heimdall promised to keep one eye always trained on him. And yours truly has already thought of a technique to keep his… I refuse to call it magic… at bay. You will be safe from him, albeit a bit irritated. He seems… well, like a little brother.”

Nothing Heimdall or Shuri could do would lessen the real danger Bucky was in, but he let it go, just as he decided to let this unwanted assignment go. Bucky wanted to tell Shuri that she owed him, but the truth was that he would never stop being in her debt, or in T’Challa’s debt. And helping other needy people settle into Wakanda sounded like a nice job with which to start repaying them.

Bucky could tell that this was a great honor, and an even greater vote of confidence. “You really think I can do this?”

“I have every faith. T’Challa has offered to let them build them homes in the same region that you have been living in. You’ll have company soon.”

Bucky sighed. “I was doing fine with the kids—both kinds. But all right.”

* * *

Even though Bucky had chosen to make his home in the remote lake region on the almost uninhabited far eastern edge of Wakanda, Shuri kept a room in the palace reserved just for him. Given that he’d come all this way for the Asgardian arrival, she’d moved up their biweekly check-in to the next morning.

When Bucky showed up at the lab, he found Thor and Loki in there with her, trying on eyeballs like glasses in a shop.

“I look like that pony you were so fond of when we were children,” Thor was saying when Bucky walked in. “Do you remember? One eye lavender, and one eye brown.”

“He was an extraordinarily fast horse. His eyes were irrelevant.” Loki picked up a different one from the tray. “Try this. It is bigger and prettier than your real eye ever was. Should serve as an improvement.”

Bucky could hear the fondness in their voices, see it in the way Thor was so obviously happy for his brother’s attention, and in the way the stiff and reserved Loki laced his teasing with loving constructiveness. The fondness they shared made Bucky even more unable to take his eyes off them, made him like them even more, even though he hardly knew them.

He had spent a night in his overly-large, overly-soft bed thinking about them. Mostly Loki. Tossing and turning and trying to reconcile the fact that the first—he hated calling it a ‘crush’, but at around 4am he’d admitted to himself that that’s what it was—Bucky had felt since the fucking _war_ was on a smug, snooty alien who’d tried to take over the planet. 

As soon as Thor had pulled the latest test eye out of his face and covered the hole with his patch, he greeted Bucky with a wide grin and a painfully eager handshake. “I didn’t get a chance to meet you last night, but I could not have been happier to learn that you were here, and that you were well. Steve has told me everything about you. I helped with the search. You were a difficult man to find, Bucky Barnes. I confess I feared the worst, and was delighted to learn that all worked out for the best.”

“Yeah, it did. Thanks. He’s told me a lot about you, too, last time he came to visit.”

“I am glad he has seen you, and knows you are well.” 

“And how is the valiant captain?” Loki asked.

“Wait, you know Steve, too?” Bucky asked eagerly, before his brain caught up with his excitement, and remembered where Loki and Steve would have met.

“We shared but the briefest of acquaintances.”

“I have arms for you to try out while Thor picks an eye,” Shuri interrupted. 

“Do you keep closets full of every kind of body part?” Loki asked with interest. “What a brilliantly macabre hobby.”

“No, I designed the eyes yesterday. I’d never thought about prosthetic eyes before, but it’s fascinating! I’m still working on the mechanics, and need to know a bit more about his biology, but I can have whichever you pick ready by the end of the week. But the arms… I have been working on arms for months. I show them off every time Bucky visits, but he’s refused every single one.”

Loki fingered the shelf of hand-smithed prosthetics that one of the lab assistants wheeled in. First the vibranium lightweight model, the battlefield-ready armoured version, the gold-tipped formalwear version, the flesh-colored arm with hyper-sensitive nerve endings, the one that was basically invisible…

For the first time ever, Bucky wished he were wearing one of the arms. Shuri had said she could hook them up to his nervous system; perhaps he’d be able to feel Loki’s feather-light touch.

“These are all impressive, almost magical in their advancement,” Loki asked Bucky. “Why would you refuse to wear any of them?”

“I get along all right with just the one. I’m plenty strong, and my life here hasn’t required more than that.” 

“But why exist as merely ‘all right’, when you could be whole? Infinitely more than whole, given the technology at your disposal,” Loki pressed.

“Being ‘infinitely more’ hasn’t worked out that great for me,” Bucky said awkwardly. 

Loki looked ready to dig in, but Shuri rescued Bucky from further discomfort by shoving the tray of eyeballs into Thor’s arms and shooing both of them away. “You can try the rest of them on your own, and let me know later which one you choose. This is the time I have reserved for Bucky.”

Loki looked at Bucky even more increased interest, especially when the assistants began to ready the brain scan station. “Reserved to do what?”

Thor grimaced, and then said, with well-meaning formality, “Sergeant Barnes received enhancements similar to those of his friend, but his journey through the years was not as painlessly placid. It involved some unpleasantness that the princess has helped with.”

“They wiped my mind and put a lot of garbage brainwashing in instead. Made me kill for them. But Shuri cleaned it all out,” Bucky reiterated, more directly. “I come to the city every couple of weeks to make sure it’s still better.”

Loki looked ready to launch a thousand questions, but Shuri commanded, “Out!”

Even Thor quailed in the face of her imperiousness, and motioned for his brother to follow him.

“Shall we meet later?” Loki asked, suddenly close—too close—to Bucky. “We should plan for the Asgardian relocation.”

“Sure,” Bucky replied, resisting both of his conflicting urges to take a step back and to lunge forward. “I’ll find you when I’m done here.”

“I like the burnished vibranium with gold foil underlay the best, for what it’s worth,” Loki said just before he disappeared around a corner.

When they were finally alone, Shuri motioned Bucky to sit on the windowsill while she adjusted the monitors on him. When they’d first begun these treatments, months ago, he’d panicked every time, because the set-up reminded him of _that_ chair. However, as soon as she’d realized it, Shuri had had it all redone in goofy pictures of sheep and padded with pink velvet. Nowadays, he laughed every time she led him to it. Nothing could have been farther from Hydra.

“That one pretends to be bored by everything, but he is having trouble pretending to be bored by you,” Shuri said as she did up the soft straps.

“Who?” Bucky asked, though he knew quite well. He could feel his face heat up, not in reaction to her statement, but rather in reaction to the way the beeps from the reader gave his increased heart rate away.

“You have no secrets from me, Barnes,” she said.

* * *

Shuri kept Bucky longer than usual, gossiping more than anything else—about her latest breakthroughs, about her brother’s hapless courtship of Nakia, about all she was hoping to learn from the Asgardian ship-builders, about Heimdall’s big sword…

All of which meant that her “when I’m done here” to Loki really meant “at the end of the day.” By the time Bucky finally got out of Shuri’s lab, the sun was already well on its way to setting

It took him a few tries, because to the servants, most of the new Asgardians were the same—foreign, pale, good-looking, long-haired—but eventually someone was able to tell him that Prince Loki was last seen heading out to a lonely terrace overlooking the western gardens. 

“You’re a hard one to find,” Bucky said as he came up from behind, interrupting Loki scratching at his ankle through his leather pants while watching the sunset.

Loki immediately stopped scratching and moved his arm back to a more characteristically elegant position on the railing. “I was beginning to think you’d never come.”

“I brought drinks. Food, too.” Bucky held up the bottle of whiskey Shuri had given him and the sandwiches he’d picked up from the communal buffet. “Figured this would take awhile.”

“I see that you finally took the princess up on her offer,” Loki said, nodding at the new arm on Bucky’s left side. It was the one he had explicitly said he’d liked, but he didn’t embarrass Bucky by mentioning that fact. “Why today?”

Bucky couldn’t tell him the truth, which was that watching Loki finger all of the arms had gotten him thinking of more, well, _fun_ things he could do with it than Shuri or Okoye or T’Challa had ever been rude enough to present. So instead, he answered, “Figured I’d need both if I’m going to help you all get settled. Sounds like you’re all headed for my neck of the country. There’s not much there right now, but we can build farms or towns or whatever you all need. I don’t really know what would be best for you all. It’s probably different from what I needed.”

Loki understood the words as Bucky had meant them—as an invitation to tell him more about the Asgardians—their customs, their expectations, their strengths. And so he did, using that smooth voice of his, and maintaining an undercurrent of waspish humor that kept making Bucky laugh. Loki was quick, too, understanding everything Bucky proposed for how to move everyone, and how to build for the number and size and set-up of communities that would make the Asgardians feel at home.

Asgard couldn’t be recreated on Earth, much less in a few years. But Bucky and Loki ended up with what they each admitted sounded like a half-decent plan to propose to Thor and T’Challa for how to make everyone at least comfortable and self-sustaining.

It was late when they finally wrapped up planning for the day. The sandwiches were long gone and the handle of whiskey almost finished. The palace’s exterior lights brought out the chiseled shadows of Loki’s face, which Bucky was busy trying not to stare at when he got wallowed with a non-sequitor. 

“Why do you think they took us in?” Loki asked.

“Because they’re the only ones with technology advanced enough to have picked up your signal from that far out? Because T’Challa is kind and likes to help people who need it? Because Steve vouched for Thor as good people?” Bucky paused, because this all seemed obvious to him. “Is this a trick question?”

“As far as I can tell, this country has never allowed in outsiders. Even the recent steps to ‘open up’ have focused on bringing aid to other countries, rather than inbound guests. And yet, despite all this closure to those of your own planet, they decide to welcome and house and entire alien species. It doesn’t fit.”

“What’s your point?” Bucky braced himself for some sort of insult to the royal family, and was already starting to get angry about it.

“It means that this T’Challa is no fool. He saw an opportunity to put a hardy species in his debt. A hardy and warrior-driven people possessing magic and technology that this world has but barely sampled. A people who would fight for him in any attack. Literal gods.”

“That’s a pretty pessimistic view, and not just of T’Challa. Of people in general.”

“Life has left me a pessimist.”

“Well, it hasn’t left me one, and I’ve probably got more reason for it to have than you—a prince of gods.”

“Of anyone, you should know better than to judge people based on assumption. Do not make the mistake of doing so with me,” Loki replied darkly, darkly enough for Bucky to sense and inkling of horrifying pain underneath that tightly controlled blandness, and shiver.

“Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, since he had a feeling Loki didn’t want to talk about it, “I’m telling you, that’s not why he took you all in.”

“And why do you think he took _you_ in?”

“Same reasons. Because he’s a good guy He saw that I was in a rough spot, and knew Shuri was the only one with the tech to help me.”

Loki propped his elbows back on the railing and braced himself on them, turning himself into a long, graceful slant, the same angle as the setting rays of the sun. He pursed his lips and looked Bucky up and down, and up and down again, in an appraising, thoughtful, guarded way that made Bucky feel hot and vulnerable and nervous and hopeful all at once.

“Or because,” Loki argued, “like the Asgardians, you are singular on this planet. As far as I can tell, you are the most dangerous warrior this realm has ever produced. You need no suit, nor are you restricted by any allegiances or images to uphold. A free agent. You are something more than simply human, but without the, well, unfortunate side effects of the Hulk. An exquisite, uniquely perfect specimen of what man wishes it could be. To have one such as you in one’s debt is quite something, and this is what King T’Challa now has. You _and_ Steve Rogers, who, if his dramatic devotion to you is half of what Thor tells me, would probably lay down his life for those who helped you.”

“I’m not dangerous,” Bucky insisted, trying not to think about the fact that Loki had just called him ‘exquisite’ and ‘perfect’. He told himself that Loki must have meant it in the way people talk about Ferraris, or sculpture. “Not anymore. Not now that I’m myself again. Just a guy from Brooklyn, trying to make it through the day.”

“Your modesty is… confusing,” Loki said. “I heard about you, you know, on my brief time on Earth before this.” 

“You couldn’t have. No one had heard of me. I was a ghost.”

“I had SHIELD agents under my command. Their minds were mine.” Seeing Bucky flinch, Loki frowned, and for the first time yet, actually looked a little sheepish. “I know that is a sensitive subject, but I can assure you that I...”

“As long as you’ll never do it again, and will fight with me against anyone who ever tries to do it to anybody else, we don’t have to talk about it,” Bucky said through gritted teeth. Making his peace with this had been the other part of what had kept him up all night. But he’d decided to put it in the past, just as everyone else had done, just as Shuri had begged him to do. 

“My word has a long way to go before it means something again—or so say Heimdall, Valkyrie and my brother. But, for what it's worth, I give you my word, on what little honour I have rebuilt, that I can meet those terms.”

“Great. As long as I’ve got that, we can make this work, be friends, or… whatever you want to be.” Bucky grimaced to hear the words come out of his mouth, and couldn’t decide if he hoped or dreaded that Loki might take it the wrong—or right—way. Quickly, he changed the subject. “Anyway. You were saying you’d heard of me? I’m guessing from some undercover SHIELD people.”

“Yes, and it was confusing at first, how some of the agents knew information that others of the same rank did not. It took me over a day to understand the schism in SHIELD. The ones affiliated with Hydra kept suggesting that I engage a ‘Soldier’, a ‘Fist’, kept saying that we should ‘defrost the asset’. So vague, yet intriguing. It took rounds of questioning to discover that they were talking about an actual man.”

“So why didn’t you? Defrost me, I mean?” Bucky asked, knowing that no matter what the answer, he was glad that Loki hadn’t, that Loki had never seen him when he was like… that. 

“The stone left me with slaves whose sycophancy undermined their usefulness. I had no desire for yet another witless slave, especially one whose manner of control I did not understand. Especially one who, if reports were correct, actually had the strength to hurt me if things went awry.” 

“It would have been better if you’d said it was because you didn’t want to use me, but I appreciate you not lying.” 

Loki lifted the pant leg he’d been scratching when Bucky had first come out onto the terrace. Underneath was an anklet made of differently colored kimoyo beads than Bucky usually saw. “I might have, but this new immersion into veracity is yet another boon you can thank your dear Shuri for. It will beep when I lie, and also keeps me from projecting myself elsewhere.” 

“She figured that all out in a day?” 

“Unfortunately for me. And so I am collared and bound, impotent. Well, not _entirely_ impotent.”

“Uh,” was all Bucky could say as he processed what might have been—definitely was, right?—a double entendre. Fuck it, a main message.

Loki gave Bucky another of those considering stares, this time with a cold intensity that managed to flame hotter than real heat. “Now that I’ve seen you, I believe I was right. I’d still be interested to see whether you could truly hurt me, break me. To see how much force and vigour your body can truly exert.”

Bucky gulped. “I should turn in. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’ll… I’ll see you in the morning, right?”

As if the gods were trying to help him out, the timed light on the terrace went off, making it too dark to see Loki’s reaction.

“Yes, of course. Shall we meet at the entrance to the ship?” came the very even reply in the dark. “Thor and I can introduce you to everyone, since you are to be their liaison to Wakanda.”

“Sure. I’ll see you there.”

Bucky ran into Okoye on his way back to his room. As soon as she saw him, she put her speak into fighting position. 

“Who is after you? What is wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. No one. What?”

She put her spear down again. “You had the air of a man running from some danger.”

“No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just headed to bed.”

“Oh, I see,” she said with a hint of a smile. “It is a danger that does not wield a spear.”

“Something like that.”

“I find that those kinds of dangers are best gripped by the horns and ridden wherever they will take you.”

Bucky thought of Loki’s stupid horned helmet, and felt himself flush at Okoye’s not-so-innocent suggestion.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

* * *

The palace was large, but not large enough to suddenly house hundreds of people. So, the Asgardians had still been sleeping in their ship. Even Thor and his small council had stayed on it, which Bucky thought was a nice gesture that he’d never seen from army brass or Hydra officials.

Loki must have been keeping a watch-out for him, because he descended the jet bridge as soon as Bucky approached. Shuri must not yet have found a way to turn the Hulk back into Bruce, because the Hulk was wandering around outside, chatting brokenly with the Valkyrie. 

“Hey, how’d you sleep?” Bucky asked.

“As well as I did on the voyage from Asgard.”

“That means ‘like shit’, right?” 

“You learn quickly.”

“You’re not as hard to read as you like to pretend.”

Loki leaned in close to Bucky’s ear and said, “Shhh. You’ll ruin my image.”

Bucky chuckled and said, “Are you gonna introduce me to people, or what?”

Together, they walked into the body of the ship. Disappointingly, it didn’t look that different from the inside of an airplane carrier. Just a big, empty, metal box with clumps of people strewn around the floor. Queen Ramonda had asked the Wakandans to lend the Asgardians pillows and mattresses and blankets, making the place look like a shipping container full of brightly colored furnishings imports.

It was Thor who yelled for everyone to gather, and it was Thor who introduced Bucky to the group, with much more flowery praise than he really thought he deserved, and which _definitely_ came from Steve.

“I must leave for a short time, to meet with the leaders of this world, and to reassure them that our coming here is not an invasion, but rather a refuge.”

He was going to discuss a hell of a lot more than that. Loki had told Bucky the night before that Thor had laughed and laughed when T’Challa had told him about the Accords. The gall of Earth’s leaders to presume to tell the future All-Father what he could and could not fight for. It had been ludicrous. 

Bucky gave a little wave at the end of Thor’s speech. “Hey, I’m Bucky,” was all he could think to say. It was apparently good enough, because everyone applauded. Thor took him around and introduced him to everyone whose names he knew—and even a bunch that he didn’t. It took hours, but by the end of the morning, Bucky had gone round and shaken hands with every single Asgardian—memorizing their names with the photographic memory he found himself weirdly grateful that Hydra had drilled into him. A few of the ladies and warriors simpered at him, or gripped his hand a little too far up the wrist for formality.

The old Bucky would have played up the attention. These days, all he could do was swallow down a sense of unworthiness. A sense that only got worse when, at the end of the introductions, Thor pointedly requested that Loki accompany Bucky back to the countryside to scout out the area and learn exactly what would be needed to settle everyone there.

“What, right now?” Bucky asked, taking in the thought of spending the next few days alone, with Loki. 

“No time like the present. I must go to Vienna with T’Challa, but Heimdall will manage the community while you and Loki plan.”

Bucky had spent the previous night thinking about Okoye’s advice (and he hadn’t slept the night _before_ that either, so he was pretty exhausted). But he’d thought he’d have time to ease into any decisions and actions; this was all pretty abrupt.

“You’re already more popular than I ever was,” Loki said on their way out of the spaceship.

“I don’t know about that. It’s not hard to see that you’re the fun younger prince, the one they look to for gossip. This one lady told me that everyone suspected you were impersonating your father, but went along with it. Odin had picked you the last time he needed a break, they said, and figured he must have done it again.”

Loki grew quiet at that, and then asked, with more genuine surprise than he’d let on since Bucky had met him, “Did someone truly say that?”

“Yep. And now, here’s our ride.” 

They’d been walking towards the airplane hangar: T’Challa’s parking lot. Thor had suggested that Bucky show Loki the region where the Asgardians were to settle, so that Loki could get a sense of the land, and how everyone might live on it. Loki had complained, in a little brother way, but didn’t seem that upset about it when Bucky had suggested they leave that afternoon.

Bucky’s transport was near the front of the hangar, since he’d only come a couple of days ago. He hopped in, switched it on and waved for Loki to join him.

“You sure you don’t have any luggage?” Bucky asked. “Where we’re going isn’t like the palace. It’s kinda rough.”

“There wasn’t a surfeit of time to pack, what with needing to unleash an ancient monster to destroy the planet before the Goddess of Death could murder everyone.”

“Got it,” Bucky said, thrilling, and hoping he could get the full story later. Because this was the thing he had liked most about all those videos he’d watched of Thor: the magic and fantasy of it all. And he had a feeling Loki would prove an even better storyteller than his brother.

“You ride in high style for a refugee,” Loki said as they took off in the little transport.

“Shuri gave it to me so I could get back and forth to my appointments on my own. I know I’m living on their charity, but I like to do as much for myself as I can.”

“You fly crookedly,” Loki said, instead of replying with empty reassurances.

Just to be a dick, Bucky flew even more crookedly. “Yeah, well, if you think you can do better, and think you know where you’re going, you’re welcome to try.”

“Oh, I much prefer to criticize.”

Bucky burst out laughing. “Gotta say, I’m loving your little lie-suppressor.”

“At least that makes one of us.” But Loki returned Bucky’s laughter with an almost shy smile.

The transport was really only made to hold one person, so they stood practically on top of one another, with Loki’s hands resting very close to Bucky’s on the controls. Bucky could almost have wrapped himself in Loki’s warm cape. He mostly wanted to, but needed to keep his eye on the sky.

The time flew while Loki told hilariously dry stories about everyone Bucky had just met. Two hours after they’d taken off, Bucky set the transport down on the other side of the hill from where he lived.

“I don’t like seeing it from the house,” he explained when Loki complained about the walk. “When I was a kid in the city, I always dreamed of living in the middle of nowhere. Now I do, and I don’t want that that futuristic thing ruining the picture.”

“In Asgard, the futuristic harmoniously co-mingled with the incredibly ancient.”

“Sounds neat.”

“It was… neat. It was beautiful. And now it is gone. I hated the place so much, for so long. But now that it’s gone…”

“Yeah. I know.”

“How could you possibly know? Your world is still here.”

“You clearly never saw Brooklyn in the 30s. Trust me, pal. My world is gone. Not so dramatically as yours, but it’s gone.”

When they reached the house—hut, really—Bucky lifted the curtain that served as a door to let Loki in. “It’s not much but…”

“So, this is your hovel,” Loki said, but there wasn’t much sneering in his voice. He looked at everything just as curiously and interestedly as he’d looked at Bucky the night before. 

“It’s nicer than the apartment I lived in before the war.”

“New York is ghastly, and for all your nostalgia, I would wager it always was,” Loki said absently before whirling around to focus on Bucky. His cape fluttered attractively. 

“I guess you’ll need to borrow some of my stuff,” Bucky said, looking anywhere but at Loki. “Toothbrush, pajamas—”

“I was hoping not to.”

“Huh?”

“Borrow pajamas, I mean.” Loki stepped closer and pointed an accusing finger at Bucky. “You ran from me last night.”

Bucky hadn’t expected to be called out on this so quickly, or to have to enact his resolution so immediately.

“It’s been awhile. I panicked. Why, were you disappointed?”

Loki looked liked he wanted to lie, but couldn’t, so he simply didn’t answer. “It has been awhile for me, too, since I last saw something I desired that was not a magical artifact. Interesting, genial, comely, and not a complete idiot. I never thought to find such a one on a place like Earth. And I see how you look at me, how you have looked at me since I first stepped off the ship. For all that you pretend to like your placid little life here, you saw someone who might keep you on the edge of danger, someone to prod you out of your tragedy-inspired moroseness and make you laugh. You finally saw that, and you desired it. Me. But when presented with an opportunity, you ran. I do not usually make advances, but on the rare occasions when I have, I have almost never been denied.”

“On account of being a prince, I’m assuming.”

“Or it could be my enthralling personality,” Loki dryly shot back.

“You do realize that this just makes me want to keep resisting, don’t you?”

Bucky wouldn’t have thought it possible to come any closer, but Loki did, practically backing him up against the rounded wall of the hut. “You are extremely vexing.”

“You get off on it,” Bucky whispered.

“You are not wrong.”

Bucky had already made up his mind in the wee hours of the morning, but he still made Loki wait for it for a painful second before thrusting his face forward and kissing him. He pushed his pelvis out, too, digging into the leather panes around Loki’s groin, to underscore the point. Loki kissed like he moved—deliberately, forcefully, a little bit shyly. It was Bucky who deepened the kiss by wrapping his arms—he was very glad to have gotten the prosthetic—around him and pulling him closer. It was Bucky who coaxed Loki’s mouth open to slip his hot tongue inside that cool wetness. And it was Bucky who eventually nudged them over to the thick, wide sleeping mat. It was too low for him to ease himself down and pull Loki on top of him, so they were forced to come up for air.

“I’ve never fucked on the floor before.”

“You are obnoxiously snooty, you know that?”

“You get off on it,” Loki said.

“You’re not wrong.”

Loki shoved Bucky onto the mat, where he landed with legs splayed and his tongue practically hanging out of his mouth. He knelt between Bucky’s knees and began removing his complicated clothes, piece by piece. Starting with the universe’s stupidest helmet. They wore a lot of clothes, these Asgardians, but if the rest of them looked as good underneath as Loki did, then Bucky was prepared to reconsider his stance and truly worship them as a race of gods. Loki had more muscle on him than he let on, and not a single mark or scar anywhere on his body. Soon the leather pants came off, and…

“Fuck me,” Bucky whispered, and he didn’t actually mean it like that. He meant it more as a “holy shit”. Because, damn, Loki had the most beautiful cock he’d ever seen, already hard wet at the tip, and bigger than any Bucky had seen outside of porn. Hell, even _in_ most porn.

Okay, on second thought, yeah, he did mean it like that.

“If that is how you would like it, then it would be my pleasure,” Loki said. Now that he was mostly naked—bare except for his boots—he lowered himself on top of Bucky. “Though, I will say, the second I laid eyes on that shelf of arms, I pictured you pressing the fingers of this one—this very one—deep into me, and making me come all over the gold plating.” 

He ran his fingers down the arm, just as he had in the lab, only this time Bucky could actually feel it, a faint metallic tingling that sent literal sparks of pleasure straight to his brain.

(Shuri had told him that if he felt any kinds of sparks, he was to come back for a tune-up and recalibration, but, firstly, Bucky didn’t think she’d been thinking of this kind of situation, and secondly, he’d be damned if he got this tuned away.)

“Who’s to say we can’t do both?” Bucky asked, just before grabbing Loki’s ass and pressing the index finger of his new arm lightly against his hole. “I wonder how many fingers it would take.” 

Loki groaned and bit Bucky’s ear, hard, just as hard as Bucky had always liked but never told anyone. Bucky’s dick had been hard since they’d started kissing, but now it practically started to throb inside his pants. He’d been so mesmerized watching Loki strip that he’d forgotten about taking off his own clothes; and now, he was too desperate to feel Loki’s smooth, nude weight on top of him (he was heavier than he looked, as though aliens had a different, and more pleasurable, density than humans), no matter through how much fabric.

“I gotta get some lube,” he said, wriggling himself farther up the mat so he could reach under the corner where he stashed a bottle of the stuff for late-night jerks.

“If I could take this damnable anklet off, there would be no need for that,” Loki grumbled. “With magic, I could make us both wet, so wet for each other. Wetter and readier for sensation than any lubricant in all the realms could manage.”

“I thought you said you liked me because I wasn’t ‘a complete idiot’,” Bucky said as he slathered the lube on his metal fingers. “If you think I’m going to let you out of that anklet just because I wanna fuck you, then you’ve got another think coming.”

“It was still worth a—oh Norns…” Loki replied, cut off when Bucky flipped them over, straddled him, and shoved two metal fingers into Loki without warning. His eyes fluttered open and shut in an erratic struggle between trying to look at Bucky’s face and losing himself in pleasure.

“How’s it feel?” Bucky asked.

“Cold. Hard. There are little ridges,” Loki panted. “It is even better than what I imagined last night.”

Bucky felt his precome push out of the tip of his dick a little harder at that. “You did this to yourself last night thinking of me? Tell me you did. Please.”

“You ran. I was… I was frustrated… I cannot…” Loki gave up trying to talk and just writhed under Bucky’s touch. His cock twitched every time Bucky changed the angle of his fingers. “Fuck me, please. Make me come.”

“No, you promised to do me.”

In between gasps and open-mouthed expressions of ecstasy, Loki furrowed his eyebrows; it made for an uncharacteristic but endearingly dopey effect that would have made Bucky laugh if he hadn’t been quite so busy feeling turned on. It took him a few tries, but eventually, Loki got out, “I don’t understand. Coming now has no bearing on my fucking you immediately afterwards.”

Bucky had thought it was only him who could do that; he hadn’t expected the Asgardians to have the same recovery time. He’d never expected to find someone who had that in common with him—not that he’d really been looking around. But the thought thrilled him, so much that he added a third finger and started pressing even harder inside Loki, on that spot that kept making all the smugness seep out of his face. And at the same time, he palmed himself, then thought of a better idea. He was still wearing all of his clothes, but with his flesh hand, he unbuttoned and unzipped himself. He led Loki’s limp hand to the opening, and nodded. 

Loki was pretty far gone, but not so much that he failed to understand. Like a drowning man grasping for stability in the sea, he got a firm grip on Bucky’s cock and began pulling and stroking and circling the head. Bucky’s cock had leaked enough pre-come that, even without Loki’s magic, it was slippery enough to make him buck into Loki’s grasp. 

It only took another minute before Loki was grabbing Bucky frantically around the face and choking out his name while coming, in oozing, thick white spurts into the elbow crease of Bucky’s new arm. He was still coming, in fact, when he rolled over onto all fours and pushed Bucky backwards so that he could get his mouth on him.

Bucky hadn’t gotten a blowjob—much less such an unexpected one, nor one while he was so keyed up—since the 40s. He ought to have been embarrassed to come as quickly as he did, practically as soon as his cock hit the back of Loki’s throat for the first time, but he didn’t. Instead, he only felt a sense of fun, such as he’d never felt while in bed with another person. A sense that they were only getting started. 

Which, true to Loki’s promise, they were.

“You look very pretty when you come. Your eyes get watery and sparkle,” Loki said, with a tone caught halfway between scientific dispassion and fond admiration. He rubbed his cock, which was already thickening again, with lube. “I wonder if I can make your eyes sparkle again just by entering you.” 

“Ungh,” was all Bucky, who was still coming down off his orgasm, could say in response. And before he could pull it together to say anything more, Loki had already pulled down his pants as far as his knees—not even fully off, just enough to roll Bucky onto his stomach and press in. 

Bucky let out another moan as Loki filled him up, slowly, so slowly. Loki hadn’t been fully hard when he’d started pushing in, but he was quickly getting there. Bucky thought he could come again just from the feeling of Loki getting bigger and harder inside him. 

Loki gently turned Bucky’s face to the side so he could see into one of his eyes. “Aye, I was right. There is the sparkle again,” he said, sounding pleased. He peppered Bucky’s face with kisses, and licked at where Bucky’s eye had started to water from the strain of taking Loki’s cock. “You feel like magic. And I should know.”

There wasn’t much Bucky could do, still dressed and pinned down on his stomach by Loki’s improbably weight. Not that he wanted to. He hadn’t done much of this before—his congress with men had been mostly relegated to jerking off behind the mess hall at Camp Lehigh, or in trenches with the spies he was partnered with on sniper missions. He focused on the sensation of Loki’s cock going in and out, in and out, on Loki kissing his neck and his cheek, on Loki licking along the join between his prosthetic and his trapezius.

He reached outwards with his flesh hand and waggled his fingers when he was getting close. Loki took the hint and held his hand while he began fucking Bucky harder, all the rest of the way to orgasm. 

He’d been quiet before, focused on how gorgeous Loki looked with his mouth around his cock, but this time he came screaming, sobbing out Loki’s name and making a warm mess of the blanket that covered the sleeping mat. He was still coming when he began to feel another hot gush, this time inside him. Loki held his hand even tighter.

They stayed like that, with Loki naked and on top of a still-clothed Bucky. They stayed like that long after Loki had gone soft inside him, and even afterwards, until Bucky had fallen asleep.

The last thing he remembered was a kiss on the cheek.

* * *

The next morning, the sense of a vibration in the room woke Bucky up from a deep sleep. Loki was still draped over him, long legs entwined with his, and an arm thrown protectively around Bucky’s waist. 

Bucky felt for his phone, making a green glow from under the pile of clothes they’d discarded along the way. Luckily, he still had most of his clothes on, so he could run outside, decent in case the children came by. 

“Hey, Buck,” came Steve’s bright voice when Bucky picked up. “How’re you doing? What’s new?”

Bucky looked down at himself, and then back at the hut. “Funny you should ask… I’ve got a new project.”


End file.
